The following are the recollections of Alan Welbank who joined the Club around 1965
Off the cuff my recollections are as follows. I joined the club in 1965 or 66 - I can't find any certain evidence of which.
The club was well established and active as a dinghy club operating from the premises at the back of the Victoria. Bill Barker, Jim Jepson, Frank Peacock, Gerald Iddon, Terry Vipond were the leading lights of the club.
Dinghies were Ospreys plus a menagerie of others.
In 1967 I completed building a 22ft ballerina (a Robert Tucker design) and
launched into Glasson Sea Basin using the Ports hand cranked crane for a charge
of 10/. Jim Shaw, who lived in one of the cottages on the quay sold me a mooring
about 30 yards off the old slip way and which he no longer used for his fishing
boat for £5. I kept 'Zuleika' on that without further charge until 1973.
There were no other small cruisers on the river - or, I think, in the club. Bob Taylor launched a 27 ft Eventide he had built about then and kept it in the sea basin. Various other yachts were kept in the sea basin, including boats owned by David Pye, Mr Hindle snr. - but they rarely if ever appeared at the club.
Zuleika made many trips to Piel Island and some quite respectable other cruises, reaching the Clyde, North Wales, the Irish Coast, and even, via the Grand Canal, the Shannon and the west and south coast of Ireland. in the late 60s I also had some involvement in the establishment of the Lancashire Schools Sailing association and school sailing in the Lancaster and Morecambe area. This led to me joining the committee in the late sixties. It was the time when the new clubhouse was being planned and built - in response to the wish of the Port Commissioners to build a circular road all the way along the quay and back to the main road again. Although the road never happened it the Port Commission was happy to assist the move.
Around 1970 John Howes and I proposed the current system of Rear Commodores in charge of the different activities of the club. I was the first Rear commodore (Cruising) and as such organized the first crane out for small cruisers. I had time to do this partly because I was at the time boatless, being engaged in building a new boat 'Brendan' . I think we craned out four boats - or it might have been six - a Kingfisher 26 owned by Peter Yates, a kingfisher 20 owned by Mike Kyffin, a 27ft motor cruiser and another small boat of about 20ft. We lifted them from beside the slipway, and carried them suspended over the drivers cab of the crane.
After a year abroad I took over from John Howes as club secretary in 1976 (or was it 1977) and did that job for five years. On the whole they were good years for the club with plenty of social activity. However the cruising activity was still very much the junior branch - the dinghy racing was the major activity. There were no organized cruising activities - and really not enough boats to have supported them.
On the matter of club records while I was secretary I did a good deal of work trying to summarize the club records. I am not clear if that has been kept up or if the books I left are still around. Amongst them I dug out and listed all the recorded club officers and committee members for each year since the club was founded. Also all the significant committee decisions and resolutions from all the existing minute books as I felt that these, together with the rule book constituted the statutes of the club. We also did a complete rewrite of the rule book.
Alan Welbank, January 2000